


At Last, My Lonely Days Are Over

by jonsasnow



Series: Love Songs Week 2019 [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Day 3, Did I mention angst, F/M, Jon is an idiot, Lots of Angst, jonsa, jonsa love songs week
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 17:07:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17812013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jonsasnow/pseuds/jonsasnow
Summary: Inspired by 'At Last' by Etta JamesJon has been in love with Sansa since he was eight-years-old but when his mum dies, he cuts everyone out of his life, including her.





	At Last, My Lonely Days Are Over

**Author's Note:**

> Jonsa Love Songs Week - Day 3 
> 
> OKAY PREFACE:
> 
> JON IS AN IDIOT AND MAKES REALLY BAD DECISIONS AND I'M VERY SORRY DONT HATE ME FOR IT. HE'S JUST GOT THE EMOTIONAL MATURITY OF A TEASPOON AND IS A LITTLE BIT OF AN IDIOT BUT HE'S JUST AN ANGSTY, BROKEN BEAN AND I DO LOVE HIM.
> 
> Okay, I'm done. 
> 
> Please enjoy???

The truth is Jon Snow has been in love with Sansa Stark since he was eight-years-old. 

Although, at that age, he didn’t exactly know that what he was feeling was love, but he knew that how he felt about Sansa was different to how he felt about Robb or Theon. With those two, they were his friends and he liked hanging out with them, and like any eight-year-old, they sometimes fought over stupid things like who ate the last chocolate bar and whether or not cops and robbers was a better game than tag. But with Sansa, all he wanted to do was make her smile. Anything she asked of him, he’d happily follow along, and it wasn’t just that Jon wanted to make little Sansa happy but he simply enjoyed being with her. She made him laugh. She was always so caring, in a way that Robb and Theon just weren’t. 

Of course when they got older and Arya came along, they stopped playing as much but Jon never stopped wanting to make her happy. If he heard she wanted a particular type of snack, it’d appear in her room the next day. If boys were picking on her at school, Jon would take them aside and threaten them until they stopped. And when Harry cheated on her, he picked her up from the party, drove her around Winterfell all night until he finally got her to smile again. 

But even as he did all these things, Jon never realised how he felt about Sansa. In his mind, she was a little sister he cared about but different from Arya because he knew the latter could take care of herself. With Sansa, he always told himself he paid extra attention because she was a fragile girl with a heart too big for her chest. 

It was after the summer Sansa spent in Paris with her Aunt Lysa that everything changed. Those three months had been the longest they’d gone without seeing one another and when she came back, it was as if he was seeing her for the first time. Sansa Stark at fourteen was more beautiful than any girl he had ever met or known, and in those few seconds after she came home, Jon realised he was undeniably, helplessly, and ridiculously attracted to her. 

But being seventeen and perpetually awkward around girls, Jon did what any kid his age would do: he pretended nothing had changed. If they had a party in the back garden and Sansa came out in a little sundress, Jon would volunteer to man the barbecue all afternoon just to avoid looking at her for too long. And if she asked him over to talk about boys like she used to before, Jon would just grit his teeth and imagine sicking one of the Stark dogs on them. 

But it didn’t work – not that it mattered anyways. 

Jon turned eighteen and moved to Edinburgh with Robb and Theon for university. He had had every intention of coming back, seeing her during holidays and allowing himself those brief moments of self-indulgence where he could just look and speak to her, but his mum died and going home didn’t feel so great anymore. He came for the funeral but he hardly remembered it. Everything blurred together in a dark haze and all he remembered was packing his things, selling the rest and moving everything to Edinburgh with the purpose of never returning. 

He didn’t mean for it to happen. He wasn’t even sure how it did happen but after awhile, he lost contact with most of the Starks. 

After his mum died, Jon dropped out of uni and started working in construction. He still saw Robb and Theon on the weekends but Robb eventually moved to Spain for his year abroad and stayed out there when he met a girl. Theon as well moved down to London to work for the family business after graduating. And everyone else just grew up without Jon realising the years had passed them by.

When he was twenty-five, he did think about reaching out again. He even reactivated his Facebook to look them up but that’s when he saw it: her engagement announcement. She was only twenty-two and she was already engaged. He couldn’t believe it; he especially couldn’t believe the blond-haired twat she was engaged to. The idea of really losing her felt like a distance too insurmountable for him and Jon decided to deactivate his Facebook and resign himself to the fact that that part of his life was really over.

So at twenty-nine, Jon is not bitter about the lost years but he’s not exactly thriving as he thought he’d be. He has a decent job managing the construction firm he joined ten years ago and a group of friends he has drinks with at the pub after work. He even has girlfriends from time to time but he doesn’t ever manage to fill the void where the Starks used to be. He doesn’t want to reach out either because the truth is he’s ashamed. Not just for letting them go so easily without a fight after all they did for him but for where he ended up. He’s not ashamed of who he is now, who he had to become after his mum died, but he does regret not going back to uni and making more of himself. He may not have had a dream but he does think he could have been something more. 

That’s probably why when he does see one after all these years, he promptly decides to down the entire club’s collection of whiskey single-handedly. 

Or maybe it’s just her that elicits this kind of response. 

“Slow down,” Edd says, slapping at his hand as he’s reaching for the bottle once more. “I’m not carrying ya out of here. We already got our hands full with Mr Dancing Queen over there.” He gestures to the dancefloor where their big giant ginger friend is shaking his hips with a bunch of women from a hen do. 

Jon snorts. “I’m _fine_ ,” he says with a wince. He managed to grab the bottle back and the whiskey is burning its way down the back of his throat. It stopped tasting like anything but regret several glasses ago. 

“Clearly,” Edd rolls his eyes and snatches the bottle back to hand over to Sam on the other side of the table. 

“What’s gotten into you?” Sam asks, those big eyes wide with concern, and because he’s so twisted up inside right now, Jon only feels resentment towards his friend.

“Nothing.” 

But it’s not nothing. It’s very much _something_ and she’s moving across the dancefloor, long red hair swishing behind her, as if she’s taunting him. He hasn’t seen her since she was sixteen but she must be twenty-six now. _Fuck_ , she looks good. She looks so much better than good and it kills him. 

Had he always had this strong of a reaction to her? 

Jon doesn’t remember. He can’t even recall a single memory from the last time he saw her. The funeral had been so god-awful that all he wanted to do that day was disappear. And those weeks after. And the months after that. 

She’s standing by the bar with her friend now and from this position, he can see her more clearly. She looks taller, more slender and toned than skinny, and she has a form-fitting emerald green dress on that is doing far more to him than he has any right to feel. 

“Who’s the redhead?” Edd asks. 

Jon curses under his breath and tears his gaze away. “Nothing. No one. I’m fine. Can we drop it?” 

Edd glances at Sam and the two of them shrug but thankfully stay silent. His friends are observant and they can read him better than he gives them credit for but they also know when to push it and when not to. For that, he is grateful. 

After a few minutes of tense silence, Tormund comes tumbling back towards their table and falls onto Edd, who kicks him hard. There’s a brief fight before the two settle down in their seats. Physically, Tormund resembles a terrifying red grizzly bear, but personality-wise, he’s more like a very horny golden retriever with little tact. 

“If we want, they said we can join them!” Tormund exclaims happily. 

Edd shakes his head. “You know their idea of a strip club doesn’t have women, right?” 

The smile on his face slowly disappears, replaced by a pensive frown. “Then who does all the stripping?” 

Sam hesitates. “Umm… _men_?” 

“Dudes!?” Tormund shouts. “But why - _oh_ , yeah that would make more sense.” He then shrugs. “I still wanna go. I mean I’ve never been to a dude strip club before. Maybe it could be educational.” 

“ _Educational_?” 

“You know, for future _moves_ ,” Tormund smirks, wiggling his hips even though he’s seated. The rest of them groan and kick him again from all angles. He yelps but then laughs uproariously. 

“I am not going to a male strip club just so you can learn some new moves,” Edd says flatly. “That requires a lot more alcohol than we’ve got.” 

“Say no more!” 

Tormund jumps out of his seat before either of them can tell him no and goes running across the club to the bar. Simultaneously, all three of them groan. It wouldn’t be the weirdest Saturday night they’ve ever had, not since Tormund joined the construction firm five years ago, but it’s definitely a lot more than Jon wants to deal with right now. 

Although now that his attention is back on the bar, he doesn’t see her anywhere. At first, panic rises to his throat, but he reminds himself that he had no intention of speaking to her anyways so what’s the point? Sansa is his past, and even if circumstances were different, she’d never been his to have. He has no more claim to her than anyone else and just because, even after all this time, she still makes his heart race and his palms clam up, it doesn’t mean he should go talk to her. No, it definitely does not. 

“Are we really going to go to a male strip club?” asks Sam with a resigned sigh. 

“No,” Jon says. 

“Probably,” Edd counters at the same time.

They look at each other and Jon cracks a smile for the first time tonight. 

“Well, look at that, Broody Git Snow knows how to fucking smile for once,” Edd snorts. Jon lobs an ice cube at his friend’s head and the two chuckle. The anxiety is still knotted deeply in his stomach but some of it eases knowing his friends are all weird idiots that are there for him. 

“Guess what!” Tormund shouts before he’s even reached the table (because he is that bloody loud). “I found my long lost sister! See, she’s ginger too!” 

“What?” Sam immediately says. 

Jon turns to look and his body goes cold. 

“ _Jon_?” 

Her voice is still the same, yet it’s somehow older, more mature, and it twists him up inside. “Sansa,” he breathes out. Every nerve in his body is on fire and he’s dying to run away but he’s blocked in by Edd and Sam on one side and Tormund is now standing right in front of his only route of escape. 

A brilliant smile appears on her face and Jon stands as she leans forward across the table. Her arms go around his neck and the feel of her sends his heart skittering at a worrying pace. He holds her anyways, hands wrapping around her slim waist, the tickle of her long hair against his cheek. She smells like Sansa: bright and fruity and _all her_. 

God, is it possible to still be into her after all this time? 

“How long has it been?” she asks, pulling back. Jon is reluctant to let go but he does. She smiles at him. “Robb’s never going to believe this.” 

_Robb…_

 

_The Starks…_

He remembers now why he didn’t want to talk to her. The shame of his own cowardice and weakness. 

Jon’s smile is faint as he says, “yeah, it’s been a long time.” 

Thankfully, before she can ask him any more questions, his drunk, beautiful friend says without tact, “as fun as this reunion is, do you girls wanna go to a strip club? A _male_ strip club?” 

The conversation immediately changes and everyone is joyously discussing whether they should go and why or why not it’s a good idea. Jon stays quietly out of the conversation; he’s trying pathetically not to look at her but even as kids, he was always acutely aware of her. Her movements, her laughter, just the way she speaks draws him in like no one ever has, and dimly he’s aware, like no one ever will. 

After ten whole absurd minutes of discussion, they decide to go and Jon finds himself walking down Edinburgh at one in the morning with Tormund, Edd, Sam, Sansa and Sansa’s friend, Jeyne, who, he finds, is as exuberant and mischievous as Tormund is. 

He trails behind, unable to join in the good-natured joking as he might’ve done another night. He’s watching his feet as he walks, trying to remember the last thing he ever said to Sansa, when she sidles up next to him. 

“You’d think after ten years, you would’ve figured it out.” 

Jon looks up, startled. “What?” 

“I couldn’t understand it,” she continues on; either she didn’t hear him or she chose to ignore it. “At first, we all respected that you needed the space but you never came back. I don’t mean to Winterfell; I mean to us. We thought - well, we thought we were your family too. Robb especially. But not just him, you know?”

He doesn't have an answer for her. Nothing that makes sense anyways, so he stays silent and lets her get it all out. 

“Can I be honest?” she asks, though it’s not a question that requires a response. “I was so angry with you for leaving us like that. I know we weren’t as close as you are with Robb or Arya, but I was still mad.” She chuckles softly, the sound bereft of humour. “I was mad at you for hurting them. We cared _so much_ about you and it takes ten years for one of us to finally see you? And not even on purpose?”

Jon is trying to think of an appropriate response when she grabs his wrist and stops them. “ _Say something!_ ” 

“I wish I had something better to say to you,” he says, still not looking at her. “But people grow up, Sansa. They grow apart. I’m sorry it happened but that’s it.”

Unfortunately, he can sense her anger without having to even look at her. “ _What the fuck_ , Jon? Is that all you have to say?! You’re _sorry_? That’s it?” 

Something snaps inside of him. Not anger but frustration. “What do you want me to say?” he responds. His eyes finally snap to hers, unable to hold it in any longer, and his breath catches in his throat at the way she’s glaring at him. “My mum _died_ and I didn’t handle it well. I had to get out and I did. I’m sorry that it meant we lost touch.” 

“You’re such an asshole,” she murmurs. She lets go of his hand and begins to walk off. 

This is what he wanted, right? For everything to just go back to how it was, for Sansa to go home and forget about him like she’s done the past ten years. But why does the idea of that fill him with such dread? Why does every single cell in his body feel like it’s dying the further she moves away from him? 

Jon pulls at the ends of his hair in frustration before running after her. 

“I was a coward,” he shouts. Several drunken stragglers turn to look at him but he ignores them for the redhead currently standing stock-still a few feet away from him. “I was scared of – _shit_ , I don’t know, everything, I guess.” 

He walks forward, moving a little closer, but still giving her space. 

“After my mum died, I couldn’t deal with anything. I dropped out of uni and I just fell apart but even as everything was going to shit around me, I didn’t want to involve any of you. Dumb as it might sound, I was trying to spare you guys all the hassle of putting up with me.”

Sansa does turn around at this but only to give him a repulsed look. 

He laughs. “Yeah, I know. I was nineteen. Emotional maturity was not really my strong suit… not that I got any better.” He sighs and steps a little closer. “I didn’t want to go back to Winterfell. It was too painful but I never intentionally tried to cut you guys out. I still saw Robb and Theon and I just figured I’d have time to reconnect with the rest of you when you got older. But Robb and Theon both moved away and none of you came to Edinburgh so by then I just didn’t know how to keep in touch with anyone anymore.”

“You could’ve just rang us. Or even texted.” 

“I tried.” 

The anger around her eyes have softened and it feels like it’s time to come clean, even if it means he has to go back to never seeing her again, because the truth is – the stupid, absurd, inexplicable truth is he’s still in love with her. 

“When?” she asks. 

“When I was twenty-five,” he says slowly. “I logged onto Facebook for the first since uni and I clicked on your name and that’s when –” He stops, hesitates for a brief moment as self-doubt wars inside of him, but the curious look in her eyes urges him onwards. “You were engaged. You were engaged to some guy I had never even met, with a life I was never apart of, and I don’t know what killed me more. Knowing that I had already lost you to someone else or knowing that I had been the one to create this distance between us.” 

Her eyes widen and her mouth parts but he doesn’t give her a chance to speak. 

“I was a coward, Sansa. Instead of being happy for you, I ran away and by the time I realised how much of an ass I was being, it felt like it had already been too long and I was ashamed. I let go of the only family I ever really had because I was too scared to let any of you see how fucked up I really was. And – don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy now, but I never went back to uni. I never made something of myself and I didn’t know how to face up to that.” 

“You know what’s the most fucked up part?” she asks but she doesn’t wait for his answer. “The part where you thought any of us would even _care_. Jon, did you know Arya left just before her third year of uni and ran off to Asia to go traveling with some guy she worked part-time at a garage with? Or that Robb knocked up that girl he met in Spain? Or that Bran nearly died because he was dumb enough to go climbing without a proper harness?”

She steps right into his personal space and says, “or that I got engaged to a complete and total wanker who decided to cheat on me with one of my bridesmaids?” She pokes him harshly in the chest. “We’re _all_ fucked up. You don’t have a monopoly on making bad decisions, Jon Snow! But we’re family and we support each other even when we mess up!” 

“I - I didn’t know.”

“Of course you didn’t know! You didn’t even bother to reach out!” she shouts at him, her chest heaving up and down. “You didn’t even bother to _ask_ if I felt the same way! You just assumed and assumed and left without so much as a word!” Tears began slipping rapidly down her wind-bitten cheeks. “You weren’t the only one who got their heart broken, you know?” 

His heart feels like lead in his chest. He wants to reach out for her but he knows that’s the last thing she’d want. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry, Sansa. For everything. I know it’s too late now to ask for your forgiveness but I really am truly sorry.” 

“There you go again, assuming!” Sansa grabs him by the collar of his shirt and pulls him towards her. Their lips crash together, painful and bruising, but the shock of it is quickly replaced by needy desperation. He pulls at her waist, fingers pressing into her skin, until they’re flushed against one another. It’s not the kind of first kiss he had always envisioned with Sansa; there’s no sweetness here, no whispered confessions of love or gentle shy touches. This is angry and aggressive; it’s a kiss born out of a decade of frustration and missed opportunities and terrible, pathetic mistakes. 

When she pulls back, her lips are swollen and red. “I’m not forgiving you.” 

“I know.” 

“You hurt me, Jon. You really hurt us.” 

“I know and I don’t deserve a second chance but if I had it, I would spend the rest of our lives making it up to you, _to everyone_.” 

“They’d probably forgive you right away, you know? They don’t hold grudges. They just miss you.” 

“But you hold grudges?” 

There’s a faint smile on her lips and he can’t help kissing her again, just a small peck, brief and chaste. 

“Oh yeah,” she says. “You might really have to spend the rest of your life making it up to me.” 

He smiles now too. “I’d be more than happy to.” 

“Good because for some stupid reason, I’m still in love with you and if you –” Sansa glares at him, tears springing to her eyes again. “If you leave again, I will _never_ forgive you.” 

“Sansa,” he murmurs softly, wiping at her tears with the pad of his thumb. “I’ve been in love with you since I was eight and spent the better part of ten years without you. I don’t want to ever do that again.” He presses his forehead against hers. “I promise. _Never again_.” 

“Okay.”

He leans back to look at her, his heart beating wildly, feeling like this moment right here is too good to be true. “Okay?” 

“Yeah, okay.” 

Jon nods. “Okay.” 


End file.
